


Living is Easy with Eyes Closed

by ohhtheperiphery



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhtheperiphery/pseuds/ohhtheperiphery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only ever going to be the things you do, and at the end of the day the things Dean has done wrong will always outweigh the ones he's done right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living is Easy with Eyes Closed

  
If there's a monsoon season in Louisiana, Dean figures they're smack in the middle of it. It's the tail end of a July that's as sticky as it is hot, along the state's southern border, where there's hoodoo and black magic old as the stuff in the books falling apart at their seams, shoved up under the seats of the Impala. Dean is out in the storm, sweat-slicked and mud-splattered, rain soaking through the thin layer of his t-shirt and the stiff fabric of his jeans.

Dad's a couple of steps ahead of him, large form etched out in the grey-green sickly tint of the overcast sky. The rain hits in heavy, thick drops that are just as humid as the air worming its way down into their lungs, not much to be said for any relief it might have brought from the heat. Dean slumps a hand across his forehead, brushing ineffectively at the droplets that cling on the edges of his eyebrows, drip down into his vision. Everything's blurred and hazy and that odd mixture of wetness and sticky-heat that just leaves him clammy and uncomfortable.

A few more slides in the mud and the thing's in sight. It rears on its hind-legs, seemingly out of nowhere, a black shadow splattered on a forefront of splintered rain and a backdrop of an uncut putrid skyline. Its fur is matted, mud-caked in the spots where Dean can make it out, though there's a high likelihood that what he assumes is mud could just as easily be blood. It raises one paw -- claws extended and visible, metal slicing across an icy green nothing -- and before it can move to strike John down, Dean's emptied three bullets straight into its chest.

There's science to the magic, Sam says later, patching up the almost-hole the werewolf had left in Dean's side. Dad's passed out -- half exhaustion, half a bottle of Jack Daniel's -- in the other bedroom in the shithole of a rental they've been in for the worst part of three weeks. They're spread out on Dean's side of the room, bodies curled up and in on themselves, on the rickety frame of a twin bed that can barely hold Dean's limbs, much less Sam's spindly ones that, at sixteen, seem to be determined to stretch out as far as possible. Like spaghetti, if you leave it too long on the stove, that later turns all hard and chewy. Sam's exactly like that -- stretching out too far and complaining about the growing pains, shin splints and an unending crick in his neck that he can never quite reach but Dean can get at exactly right, without even being told where to aim.

"It must be something physical, though," Sam points out, his words jabbing sharp into Dean's thoughts like his needle, steady and practiced, threading through the skin at Dean's abdomen. "'Cause what else would make _just_ silver work? They're allergic, right, to the metal. Same way dogs can't eat chocolate and humans'll die from the wrong chemical or poison."

"You think too much," Dean says, instead of, "You're really smart, aren't you." That's left unspoken the way all true things should be -- sometimes speaking the words out loud will just devalue the sentiment, the _realness_ of the idea, of the fact. It's not like they all sit around and give each other Hallmark cards on whatever day of the year the rest of the country is having barbecues; it's not like Dad tucks them in every night and tells them he loves them.

It's not like Dean is longing for any of that, either. It's a better thing, to not have to vocalize any of the truths that are as obvious to Dean as that last scrub of blood he can never quite get out from beneath his nails, and means just as much in the shape and scope of his life as that does. It just is, that's all -- Sam is really smart, and telling him he thinks too much with a wince wrapped up effortlessly into a smirk means all the more for it because Sam gets it, files away the compliment and the feeling wordlessly, holds it closer to himself for the act of something akin to telepathy.

*

The flip side, of course, to the things that fall around them unspoken, opening up seamlessly, like blood blossoming beneath skin into a bruise, is that sometimes there are things Dean can't always exactly follow. It's like knowing a song but being unable to sing it, which Sam accuses him of on a daily basis, switching spots in the bathroom. The mirror's fogged and the air even heavier than usual, and Sam bitches like a perfect little princess, shoving past Dean, elbows knocking with a sharp pain that reverberates up through Dean's funny bone and into his shoulder. The requisite "bitch" and "jerk" aside, Dean's down the hallway and shoving a mostly-clean shirt over his head, listening to the sound of water hitting tile, slapping off the edges of the shower stall.

Sometimes, Sam hums to it -- never loud and obnoxious and scripted, like Dean bellowing at seven-thirty in the morning, when he's mostly being a little bitch himself but also using the excuse to wake Sam all the way up so he's ready to get his ass down to the local high school. He'd never really want to miss class, but the late nights slow him down. He stays up for most of them, head buried in the next great American novel, or studying for a physics exam.

"Jesus fuck, don't ask me," Dean says, rubbing his face against his palms at three in the morning, shoving a lukewarm cup of coffee towards Sam's slumped shoulders. Sam takes the mug in his hands without looking up, face still furrowed and frowning a motherfucking hole into his notebook. Half the scribblings look like Greek, Dean complains, viewing the thing from upside down as he is ( _and your handwriting_ sucks _, Sammy_ ), and hey, Dean's only ever had to deal with their Roman cousins.

"Funny kryptonite, isn't it," he muses, flicking a discarded pencil as Sam mostly works to ignore him, "Latin."

"What?" Sam doesn't quite snap. He tries; it's in the sharp jab of his elbow, sliding and then shunted forward every few second as he jars himself awake and attempts to focus on the swim of equations stretched out across the old table. But it doesn't make it all the way to his eyes, which is where Dean can see all the things Sam probably couldn't even hide if he wanted to.

There are perks, sometimes, to having basically raised someone straight out of diapers. Mindreading may be one of them, although that's an oversimplification, a crude naming to a thing that has more intricacies than Dean cares to deal with.

Dean shrugs, scratching an already angry-red mosquito bite along the rough slant of his neck. "Dunno," he says, "just, ever thought about how much evil shit has this big deal with fucking Latin, of all things?" It's late, and he's tired -- the exhaustion of Sam's brain at work is contagious, really, 'cause he doesn't have all that much reason to be. All the same, it makes his speech even lazier than usual -- not that he's afraid to curse in front of his kid brother, not for a good decade, at least.

Sam doesn't seem to mind, or notice, or wherever the in-between of those states is. "S'a holy language," he mumbles, rubbing his own eyes in mimic of Dean's hands. He doesn't try to stifle the yawn that follows, huge and lazy and noisy, and that's contagious, too.

"Maybe if you're Catholic," Dean assents, words mumbled out against the slick of his palm pressed up on the corner of his mouth.

While Sam's at school staring down whatever test he was studying for (if he looks at it with anything near the hole-burning concentration of his acid gaze at three in the morning, Dean figures he'll slay all the metaphorical dragons of any test, ever), and Dad's off doing the jobs that don't need Dean, Dean does the things that do need him. He does laundry and he cleans dishes and he buys fucking groceries, and he never really stops to think about the spaces he fills in with himself. Love is a nameless and many faceted object, something that shifts shape the way a werewolf slides into its true -- or at least more primordial -- form, on the week surrounding a full moon. Dean transforms in his own tides, the pull of some unseen moon cycling him into the shape and form of what it needs him to be.

And when there's nothing else to do, Dean does all the nothing he can find. Every podunk town has its share of podunk girls that are beautiful and perfect, and contrary to popular belief, Dean _does_ know their fucking names. He tells Sam about them, sometimes, late at night, on the weekends when they stay up watching some crap B-horror movie that comes in all fuzzy on the ancient TV set. Dad's either out on a job or out to the world, and it's just them, then -- in the curve of an old used couch, unidentifiable stains and cushions that are more scratchy than comfortable, sometimes shoving back and forth a bowl of over-salted popcorn.

Sometimes Dean delves into Dad's alcohol collection, always starting innocently enough on a beer and ending not all that far off on the whiskey. Sam pulls distractedly at the label of the empty beer bottle in the crack of two couch cushions, his hands still oddly small-looking despite the inches and miles and leaps he's growing every day. Dean wonders if he'll always be small, certainly not fragile but a _responsibility_ that Dean will wear for all the years until the world stops, heavy and warm and comforting against the drumbeat hollow of his chest.

It's probably the whiskey talking, on those nights. Dean closes his eyes against the scream of some poorly dubbed Japanese woman over the backdrop of Tokyo burning. Sam's breath comes in small puffs of air that he can hear over the static crumple of the audio channel. The scratch of the couch presses in against Dean's cheek, Sam's socked feet moving somewhere close to his hairline, up above, where there's light and sound and coherent thought.

Dean tells him, lets his mouth run the way he always does, maybe just a little cruder for the whiskey. He talks about the girls -- the things they do, with their mouths and their hands and their everything -- and from up above he can make out Sam's face, sometimes. He's overcast with the light of the television, flickering its black and white contrasts over the contours of his face, falling in at the slope of his eyelids, the dip between his lips and his chin. When he closes his eyes, blinks extended by the sleepiness falling over him in thick, slow waves, Dean likes it best -- can see the smooth run of his face filtered out by that oversaturated old haze of grey; can read something unnamed and on the edge of exhilaration, tightening up along his jawline, falling down in the harsh movement of his throat when he swallows. Sam fingers the discarded beer bottle he's pulled out from the couch cushions, and Dean imagines the way the glass feels, damp and not at all cool beneath the pads of his fingers.

Dean talks, and Sam listens. He's sixteen, a bunch of aching limbs, and it's not like Dean doesn't notice, the other nights, when he's pressing knuckles deep into the meat of Sam's shoulder blades and Sam's rocking back against him with sharp groans that venture a little further south, the more insistent Dean's hands get. He never says _stop_ , which is the single word, the key Dean's always looking for like the motherfucking Ark of the Covenant. Just one slip of it and he'd be off, halfway across the room and cursing up apologies from here to Mars.

Sam never says that, just leans back against the movement of Dean's hands, rocking in a way that Dean sometimes thinks they _need_. They need the wave of it, the sway and the rhythm. Dean's not an idiot -- he just plays one on TV -- they've got this overwhelming lack in their life, and it's more than the picket fence and the little league teams.

Dean has memories that are so far back they're more colors and the history of sound than anything actually substantial. He can remember being held, remembers the soft lilt of Mary's voice. _Take a sad song and make it better_ , and when they were little, Dean used to hate when Sam asked questions about Mom. It wasn't until he was older that he figured out it stung so bad for him because he had those splintered moments, those snippets of light and sound, to fall back on.

Sam doesn't have any of that. What Sam has is Dean, on all those long, overly warm nights. Dean pressed in against Sam's back, knees buckling and uncomfortable, the knobs of his knuckles kneading through hard muscle and massaging along the line of Sam's spine.

And goddamn everything, if Sam shoves his head back and moans a little in a way that's more similar to the girls Dean recounts fucking, then that's a sin Dean's going to take down with him to the motherfucking grave. Because he's sure as hell not letting it go, not purging himself of it to any priests or gods or anywhere in-between that'd be so much as willing to be the illusion of caring. There are some weights Dean can more than just carry -- is unwilling to _let go_ of. This is one of them: the sound of Sam's breath hitching in his throat as Dean moves fingers over the thread of knotted muscle up between the hard press of his back and his neck. The way Sam's hips jolt into it, cautious and probably unconscious, not enough that he's _asking_ for anything, but he's showing, just a little.

Dean is probably showing a little, too, that night with some installment of Godzilla cascading over them, painting them in shades more black and white than should ever really be allowed in something outside of fiction. The boxers he's been using as pajamas feel tight against him, but there's enough whiskey in his veins to make that not really matter. It's a slow buzz that seeps its way up and down and all back again, making him feel warm in a way the humid air never succeeds at. That feels like an excuse, for something. The warmth roots its way somewhere deep in his chest, and when Sam's hands slip off the muggy glass of the beer bottle he's been fondling for the past five minutes or fifteen to thread through the barest edge of Dean's hair, it lurches, takes root somewhere deeper in Dean, in places inside himself he doesn't have names much less the start of a thousand words to try to describe.

Dean feels his eyes slipping shut at the soft brush of Sam's fingers. It's unfaltering, decided, so much that he can't go all the way to label it an accident. Sam's up above, obscured by the dim yellow hum of the lights, swimming in a sobriety that Dean can't claim a portion in but can still recognize. And that means that Sam, at least, knows what he's doing, even if he also knows that Dean doesn't, not fully.

Dean can still follow along, though, closing his eyes again as the spread of Sam's fingers find their way to a soft spot behind his ear. It's so easy, to fall into the soft rolling dark behind his eyelids, lost in the dizzying safe lurch he's blaming on the whiskey. He can hear Sam breathing, heavy and even above him, can feel the building tension of Sam's fingertips playing their way across the tight line of his forehead, tracing a thick vein across it and over into his temple.

It'd be easier, sometimes, to close his eyes to a lot of things.

Sam usually doesn't touch himself before he falls asleep, at least not in that house in the ass-crack of Louisiana, the walls thin as paper and their respective beds creaking every time one of them so much as shifts a muscle in the night. They usually end up falling into them around the same time, collapsing more like, dead weight and bones not so far off from the ones they burn on the weekends.

So Sam is smart enough -- for a lot of things, really -- not to jack off when Dean's right there, not even ten feet away, falling asleep in rhythmic breaths, slow and even and just a little off the pace of Sam's. Or maybe he's just too tired; he's always been more of a morning person, by default, when given the opportunity and not pushed so far to the breaking point of school and hunting and growing the fuck out of his own skin to be too tired for _any_ time of day, anymore.

But when it happens -- and it does, occasionally -- it's in the mornings. The light jabs its way in like spindled fingers, splaying grey and an offshoot of yellow, painting ribbons or roots across the chipped wallpaper of their small room. Sam's bed creaks with it, a persistent noise, and Dean freezes when it wakes him. Stares into the shadows of his side of the room, neck twisted uncomfortably so that his face is pressed in against the paint and plaster of the wall, struggling to breathe in the echo imitation of sleep.

The sound of Sam's breathing is a bite above harsh, the slow whines caught in the back of his throat and leaking their way out on every few thrusts. It's easier than it should be, to pretend that this is something normal. That every older brother does this for his sibling, ignores the small grunts and groans of him fucking his way into his mattress, the same way he ignores the half-visible outline of his hard-on during late-night massages.

Dean doesn't have the heart -- or the something else, the gumption, maybe that's the word for it here, on the outskirts of New Orleans -- to take the edge of it off, an hour later when he turns the water pummeling its way out of the showerhead just a fraction colder than necessary. It slaps its way across his skin, starts at his face and slams over his chest, down the rest of his body to spiral out through the grime of the drain. Takes some of the necessary edge off; the weather here is sweltering, at turns wet and heavy and all the rest just fucking _hot_. And some of the other edge, the warmth and tightness at the memory of Sam's skin slapping, not all that unlike the sound of water hitting along the edges of Dean's collarbones.

No, during those early morning showers, Dean manages. He closes his eyes and centers himself, centers around some semblance of a normality, of a _morality_ that he isn't even sure where the basis or the necessity of lies in, anymore. Some things are _physical_ , right, make sense in the way that's science, over magic, that's cold-hard facts over fanatical belief. Werewolves must be allergic to silver. It sounds ridiculous when you're sitting there discussing it like it's a fucking school subject, like it's something worth anybody in their right mind's time. But it's different when it's something tangible, something you've seen with your own eyes and shot with your own hands. When it's hands not-faltering and constant at your side, threading you from the inside up and just pointing out something that you can't, at least, deny, as a certainty, something real and observable.

Dean's not an idiot; he'll keep repeating that one until the day that somebody, himself or otherwise, believes it. But there's this way Sam sounds, voice filtering in diluted and covered-up with the dull needle-sound of a thousand spigots of water hitting ceramic, when he sings in the shower. It's quiet enough that Dean almost can't make it out, but if he strains to listen, it might be some song off whatever mix tape he's shoved in the car this week.

It isn't the memory of a motherly voice singing him to sleep that Dean's thinking of, when he snaps and finds that place inside himself that's just a skip off-centered after all. He stretches out on his side of the room, head thrown back against the wall, hand shoved inside his jeans. The sound of Sam's voice is a distant hum on the other side of the wall, a voiceless noise that Dean echoes unconsciously in the back of his throat, fist tightening in quick, even thrusts.

Sam's bed is in eyesight, if he bothers to open them, sheets still tossed everywhere. Dean shouldn't -- shouldn't, doesn't mean the same as _doesn't_ \-- think about what's under them. About what mess Sam made, fucking his own palm, too, when he thought Dean was still sleeping or was too -- something -- to care.

Afterwards, Dean likes to imagine he doesn't really think about anything, those mornings. And maybe, almost, he doesn't; except there's always going to be a thought, buried down deep, the same way there's always a bone or a reason to every ghost. So there's a little of that, of that something Dean doesn't have words for -- and that makes it more real, or at least more inherent, more pure a feeling -- peeking its way up through the dark pit of his chest and winding its way like a snake around his heart, squeezing and distracting and numbing, when he bites down on the inside of his cheek and comes, legs spread and brother just on the other side of the wall, the soft pitter-patter of water a barrier more substantial and welcoming than the actual physicality of plaster ever manages to be.

Sam's hair is getting long, falls in his eyes when he emerges from the bathroom. He sloshes it out, pushes it back with his hands, towel wrapped around his legs and rummaging through his side of the room -- only slightly more organized than Dean's -- for something to wear. Dean swallows, finds himself thinking about what Sam's hair would feel like, wrapped around his fingers, sliding under the curve of his thumb. He'd probably lean into it, the same way he leans in when Dean rubs along his back, across the curve of his arms, massaging all the kinks out of his muscles, his bones. The way Dean leans into Sam's touch, the nights he's drunk enough to pretend it's nothing and Sam's happy enough to pretend, too.

*

The witches that drive them up to Tennessee somewhere around the first of October don't look anything like your textbook old crones, the kind that'll be walking the street in thirty-one days and that litter the pages of the Hans Christian Anderson books lost somewhere in the trunk, shoved down in a box that's got all Sam's books from when he was a kid and Dean's old Star Trek tapes. They're part of a church group, and their leader is a member of the church board. It's not the first time they've dealt with inner-infestation, with the rot taking hold in the center and festering its way out, warping and corrupting everything in its osmosis path along the way.

It's a blood bath, at the church, when Dad catches up with them. They'd met some witches before -- couple years back, on the outskirts of fucking Salem, of all places -- and that'd been more of a Nick-at-Night comedy, all slapstick and a bit of crude humor, when one of the bastards had started projectile vomiting from some spell gone haywire, back-firing on herself and then front-firing all over Dean. Sam had laughed and laughed, and Dean cuffed him across the ear when he still wouldn't shut up about it, hours later.

This is nothing like that.

The blood drips down the altar set up at the pulpit, oozes its way into the carpet, crimson at the edges and purple-black in the center, where it's coalesced the thickest. Bodies are twisted left and right, and in another life Dean would take his surrogate roles far enough to turn and cover Sam's eyes, shield him from a vision he doesn't need burning into the back of his eye sockets the way Dean knows the smell is burning putrid-sweet into his nostrils. This isn't that life, though, and Sam has already seen enough. But he does shuffle a step closer to Dean, the outline of his fingers not touching but hovering, a soft electric presence over Dean's wrist.

"What happened?" he says. It comes out on an exhale, barely above a whisper, but it strikes into the odd stillness of the hall all the same, muffled out by the carpet at their feet, falling somewhere back behind them, along empty pews.

Dean hesitates only a moment before passing the question on. "Dad?" he asks, and John's a good half a sanctuary ahead of them, but Dean knows he's heard. Doesn't stop, not until he reaches the pulpit himself, stares down at the bodies like maybe they'll spring up to life and tell him all their secrets from the grave.

That's just the point, though; Dean is gathering together the thoughts as tired neurons snap off lightning-speed inside his head. And Sam -- Sam is smart enough to figure it out, too.

"They knew something," Sam lands on the words, finally, the way his hand lands without a sound, dull thump against Dean's shoulder. "About... demons?" he ventures, cautiously.

Their dad's foot slams into something, an empty hollow thud eating up whatever curses he's spitting at what they've lost. Dean closes the circle Sam hasn't stopped hovering around, locking his fingers across Sam's wrist instead.

"C'mon, Sammy," he says, leading him back out, to where there's sunshine waiting to burn white in over their eyelids, maybe even blot out the stench of blood and dust.

*

Dad's been on this demon kick for nearly six months, and the incident with the witches does nothing to alleviate his already piss-poor mood. Sam soaks it up like a sponge, moping around the even crappier rental house they're stuck in for a fall that's too dry, crackling under Dean's skin with an unspoken tension. The paper on the walls is tearing off, revealing warped plaster underneath, stains splotching their way across all the places they can. There's one bed, and it goes to Dad; Dean takes Sam to the local Walmart (which is like the main attraction in the entire excuse of a town), and they end up getting one giant queen-sized inflatable air mattress. It's a steal, cheaper than getting two of the next smallest size, and even though Sam's the size of a small car, it's not that big of a deal.

"Gonna whore me out for all the back rubs you can, now, ain't you, Sammy?" Dean jokes on their way to the check-out. Sam's face doesn't make it half the way to glare, just sort of reproaches him in the most laidback way possible. The fluorescent bulbs flickering overhead do nothing for his complexion, not that Dean figures they'd do much for anybody. He's a sort of bright neon green, shadowed with dirty greys, throwing the bags under his eyes and the hollows slipping into his cheeks into stark relief. Dean almost asks if he's hungry, but bites those words down on the back of his tongue. No point in asking questions you already know the answer to. No point in making Sam smile that half-hearted smile he knows won't pacify Dean and lie and say he's fine, because there's nothing Dean can do more than what he's doing, and Sam knows it and he knows Dean knows he knows.

It's a recursive spiral, like looking into a refracted trail of mirrors, and like so much these days it makes Dean's head swim and something in his chest ache.

The kids in Bethel Springs, Tennessee speak with an extra twang all their own that you don't really get even in the dirty south. They make Dean nervous, the way they clump together after the three-fifty bell releases them from the confines of the high school. They clog out like blood from an open artery, pouring down the concrete steps and coagulating up in small circles, some just the same peroxide blonde cheerleaders you'll find across the whole goddamn continental states, others in groups that look more menacing, if not all that threatening. Dean doesn't doubt Sam's ability to take care of himself, that's never been in question. Just doesn't appreciate it, the kind of stares he gets, making his way across the blacktop and towards the car, bag slung over his shoulder and the harsh line of his stance never exactly reaching that careless stride it's taken Dean twenty-odd years to perfect.

Uneasiness doesn't grow so much as lives permanently, somewhere in the pit of Dean's stomach. He's most at home when he's on a hunt with Dad, when the recoil of his Glock slams that familiar, not-quite pain through his shoulder, giving him some sort of kinetic sympathy with the thing he's shot through the chest.

Sam is another kind of home -- not less or more, just different. Dean teases and talks, the same familiar patterns they can fall into effortlessly from coast to coast, until Sam's eyes are about to roll three-sixty in their sockets. Those things aren't roles, aren't masks he puts on to cover something that's rotten underneath. They're just part of a whole. But the uncertainty remains the same, twisting in his gut and rearing its head at odd moments.

"How's school?" Dean asks, shoving aside a couple half-eaten bags of chips until he finds the instant ramen.

Sam's sitting in the middle of the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the island jutting out into it. Its grimed platinum surface is caked in fingerprints and gleaming nastily against the off-custard yellow of the walls in the tiny-ass excuse for a kitchen. Dean switches on the stovetop, a thin smell of gas filling up the air the way it always has since they've rented out the place.

Sam shrugs, the slant of his lips downcast momentarily. "Whatever," he says, not really in response.

He's no good for the fall semesters, really. Likes the spring, when everything's coming back to life and there's soccer teams to try out for. The back-end of October's no good this far south, for anything but dying leaves and droughts, and kids in small towns that get bored and pick on whatever target they can, easy or otherwise.

"Just teach 'em a lesson," Dean says, and he doesn't have to turn his back on the stove to see Sam's head snap up.

"It's fine, Dean," Sam says, the words taut and held back, like the bubbles just starting to form at the bottom of the metal pan.

Dean shrugs, still doesn't turn around to show Sam the harsh purse of his own lips. "Just sayin', Sammy. Those fuckers don't know who they're dealing with, and there's no reason to bend over all fucking Gandhi about it."

"It's not a big deal," Sam mumbles out. Dean frowns into the steam, watching the first of the bubbles break the surface tension before pouring in the noodles. He swivels around, back pressed against the edge where the stove cuts into the countertop. Sam is thumbing the edge of the island, observing the swirled musty fingerprints embedded over its smeared surface, not meeting Dean's gaze. He can hide his eyes behind his hair, but he can't hide the purpling welt sliding its way across the left side of his face.

"Sort of is," Dean counters, not even remotely ready to let this drop.

Sam grumbles something else out mostly to the direction of the table, something that sounds like it starts with "don't want," and wherever it ends is so caught up in Sam's mouth that even Dean can't begin to fully decipher it.

"What?"

He still doesn't look up, though his shoulders go tense at the strictness Dean isn't bothering to try and keep from his voice.

"I said," Sam repeats slowly, around gritted teeth, "I don't want social services coming round again, or whatever." His shoulders roll decisively with the words, and on the tail end of them he looks up, eyes obscured but peering out from behind the place where his bangs have fallen over them. Needs a haircut, just another thing to add to the list.

Dean isn't sure if it's supposed to be threatening, that glance, much less cares. So maybe about two state lines back they had an unfortunate run-in with an overly concerned moron of a teacher who had called social services to their motel. It wasn't anything Dean couldn't handle, wasn't anything a good few hundred miles and a new life in a new town couldn't fix. Wipe them clean, like it never happened. Nothing for Sam to be worrying about, now.

Dean breaks eye contact to turn back around, swirling the softening noodles in the water before switching off the heat with a dull click. "They'll call social services anyway, you keep showing up to school with bruises like that all over." He drains most the water, makes his way over to the table and sits across from Sam, pouring half the contents first into Sam's bowl, then into his own. Sam's not exactly meeting his eyes again. Dean rakes them over the shape of the mark, doesn't have to reach out and press fingers along the indent of Sam's eyes, down over his cheekbone, to make Sam flinch away as if he already has.

Sam shrugs, ripping open the packet of powdered chicken and spices. "Not much different from a hunt," he says, and then nearly jumps out of his chair when Dean's fist slams into the table.

"It's different, Sam."

"Yeah, different how?" Sam's knuckles are white, balled into fists to mirror Dean's. He's not shaking, not yet, but there's something like pre-shocks rippling up through his arms, heralding the storm that's brewing just underneath. That's fine, that's _normal_ , that's what Dean wants -- doesn't get why the kid doesn't just use that anger when other kids are being complete assholes.

"You've defended yourself before, Sam, why the hell's it any different this time?" Dean demands, leaning forward, bowl of ramen discarded and ignored and too hot to try to eat yet, anyway.

"It's unnecessary attention, _Dean_." Sam says his name like it's an insult, like Dean is too dumb to follow along. Maybe that's what he thinks. Dean scowls, feels the lines of it deepening on his face. Even to himself, he knows that isn't true. Doesn't stop the sort of vindictive indignation brought on by thinking it, though.

"And I told you, showing up to class black and blue is unnecessary attention," Dean counters. "That's a sure-fire way to get them down on your ass. Whatcha gonna tell them, huh, you fell down some frikkin' stairs? Nobody buys that shit, Sammy, you know better than that."

"You saying beating up some group of jerks is gonna keep me under the radar?" Sam's picked up his fork, is poking his ramen more than eating it, following the swirls of steam curling up into the air.

"Maybe I'm saying, don't get punched." Dean stops, frowning. "What're they hounding on you for, anyway?"

Sam shrugs again, slurps around his fork. "I'unno. New kid, I guess. Freak. Normal stuff."

Dean exhales, a harsh, considering noise around the word _normal_. "Well, they're bastards, all of them, and I'll break their faces in, they keep at it."

"It's okay, Dean," Sam repeats. This time it's on the hint of a smile, something small and mostly tucked away, but beaming its way tentatively up at Dean. As if privately comforted by Dean's words -- always large, full of a bravado and a promise that he, at least, can actually follow through on, and Sam knows it.

It's not okay, and Sam knows that, too. He's probably desensitized to it, though -- to things not being okay. How else are you gonna end up, when you spend your entire life dealing with the kind of nightmares every other kid grows up being convinced don't actually exist? Sam deals with enough blood and death and gore to fill a one-way ticket to the nearest child services center anyway. In the meantime, Dean's the one left trying to hold together the pieces, make something out of his shithole of a life that he can actually live.

"They pissed at you 'cause you're so smart?" Dean asks, later that same night, or morning. Sam is eating more of the ramen, this time dry, crunching on it straight out of the wrapping. He takes a swig from his Red Bull every minute or so, rubbing at his eyes and staring over his pre-calc notes.

Sam snorts, spare broken pieces of dried noodle spraying over his spiral notebooks. "Doubt it," he manages.

Dean picks at the torn edge of a discarded piece of paper. It's got a bunch of indecipherable shit on it, formulas and crap. Doesn't mean much to Dean, who finally dropped out last year but gave up much sooner than that.

"How come, then?" he tries again, voice oddly soft over the buzzing of the kitchen lights.

"Told you," Sam tries. He looks up from his textbook, couple moments later, when Dean stays silent. His hair's sticking out in funny directions, ghost spikes following where his hands have been on occasion. There's a smear of grey from his pencil lead, on the side of his face that isn't purpled and slightly swollen.

"Dean."

Sam's voice comes out on a crack that's probably puberty, still, or at least mostly. He's staring at Dean with a look that's more than that, something silent and strange, electric and almost-tangible in the air between them. Dean chalks it up to tiredness.

If there's a warning in Sam's tone, Dean ignores it. Leans forward, and his fingers skirt over the edge of soft paper, worn down from pencil scratchings, faded and smoothed with grey. Sam's fingers are there, too, when he pushes a bit further than he meant, like he's drunk on something, on that unnamed thing lacing up between them, starting from the harsh stare leaking out of Sam's eyes and shooting up Dean's veins.

Sam moves his hand first, breaks the contact. It's just to lean back though, yawn against the yellow shadows stabbing into his bloodshot eyes. Dean glances at the clock -- bright, intrusive green numbers blinking 2:53 over the microwave.

"Time for bed?" he ventures, maybe a little hopefully. Sam rubs at his face one last time, shutting close one of the notebooks strewn between them in the process.

"Yeah," he allows. "Getting a little sick of calc."

Dean's laugh is an afterthought, dry as the paper feels when he pulls back, stretching in his own position across from Sam. "Not really the kind of pie I'm interested in," he says, tapping some discarded sheet with two fingers. The laughter that rips out of Sam starts in his throat, deep and guttural, still an odd and new thing from Sam -- little Sammy who's shot up God knows how many feet the past couple of summers, voice dropped just as many octaves, and Dean doesn't know if he'll ever get used to that, isn't sure he really wants to. It ends in his eyes, a gleam of something hopeful or maybe just happy, another thing Dean's never gotten used to and never fucking wants to, either. Let the kid keep that, that something Dean can hold onto and rely on in a way that is so completely selfish.

The sounds of a distant highway leak in through the closed window panes as they fall asleep on the shared Walmart air mattress. It's still warm for the middle of October, an old rickety fan nearly shaking off its hinges overhead, but Sam sleeps close anyway, curved into the line of Dean's body, a fingerwidth away from actually touching.

When Dean wakes in the morning, Sam's shoved up against him, tangle of too-long limbs. Dean can feel where his shirt is pushing up and their skin is sticky against each other's, remnants of the night pressed up in an oddly comforting warmth. Still half-asleep, he feels lazy and distractedly content, Sam's face pressing in against the slope of his neck, along his jugular vein. It beats, the offshoot echo of his heart, overheated and emphasized for Sam's lips pressed against it, in the grey-brown light of the October dawn breaking in through the polyester blinds, cutting them in vertical slices.

*

They leave Bethel Springs on a Thursday. Dad packs while Dean heads over to the school to get Sam. He pulls in and watches, eyebrows knitting together and face falling into what's become a familiar scowl, as scads of kids crawl their way out, headed towards the dusty orange-yellow buses lined up in rows.

Sam is walking with a boy Dean has seen a couple of times. Sam makes friends differently than Dean ever did in high school, mostly because he does. It's never the most lasting of things -- can't be, and Sam is more than aware of that. Doesn't stop him from doing it, though. He doesn't make a whole lot of them, of course -- those groups have already formed and settled, long before they blow their way into town for a couple weeks or months, tops. Instead, Sam picks up kids here and there -- the spare ones, the outcasts, the ones who can afford to become his temporary friend, even if they can't always afford it when he inevitably disappears back into that long road of dust and blood and secrets he came from.

This one's a scraggly boy, tall and skinny with a face full of freckles, nearly the same height as Sam, although half that could be from his unruly mop-tangled hair. He shifts his bag awkwardly across his shoulder, clutching a couple loose books to his chest, and smiles at Sam in this way Dean recognizes immediately. It's straight off the faces of small-town girls, the ones that are so enamored with an idea of who they think Dean might be, sometimes that's all they ever end up seeing.

He's practically glowing, anyway. Whatever Sam is saying to him is making his face oscillate from that soft, uncertain but rapt smile, to an outright ear-splitting grin. Dean can't hear them, but he can see the laughter shaking through the boy's shoulders, sees the way it makes the corners of Sam's mouth twitch appreciatively in response.

When Sam catches sight of the car, he nods once in Dean's direction before turning back to his friend. He says something else, clasps a hand to the kid's shoulder. Dean is still too far away to make out much, but he can see the way the boy leans into that, momentarily, the light from his smile still radiating off his face.

He's got twin bruises to match Sam's, beneath his eye.

"We're leaving," Dean says in lieu of greeting, as Sam stumbles his way into the passenger seat, knees and elbows knocking against the dash. "Dad says we're headed north. You know, just in time for the winter." His sigh is purposefully overdone, trying to play it off with a mock-exasperation that he hopes might resonate cheerfully enough with Sam.

Sam stills for a moment, then it's gone. "Oh," he lets out, both the noise and that momentary tenseness expelled from his body, his breath soft and splayed on the window. His eyes are turned toward his friend, not Dean.

"You need to say goodbye or something?" Dean's hand is on the gear, knuckles loose. His voice comes out a little more gruffly than he means it to, not sure what for, but if Sam's bothered at all, he hides it with ease in the loose slump of his shoulders.

He shrugs. "S'okay."

Dean clenches his fingers over the leather of the knob, doesn't shift into drive, yet. "Kinda mean, to just up and go, don't you think?"

"Jesus," Sam says on another exhale, running a fist through his hair and still not exactly looking at Dean. "It's not a big deal, Dean."

_What's not a big deal_ , Dean fights down the words, doesn't really need an answer. The kid's heading towards the buses, his stance already diminished and strange, like Sam took all the light and ease out of him, not just his eyes, when he walked away. Like he's trying to pull himself in, and Dean has to wonder how many kids are quiet, not just because it's easier than drawing unwanted attention, but because they have to be, don't have the background Sam does. 'Cause sure, maybe Sam knows that some nightmares are real, knows that being protected by definition means that there's something out there worth being protected from. But at least he can cope, can take the punches where they land and know that in a few weeks time, he'll be moving on to some place that always at least has the silver-lining hope of maybe being better.

Dean eyes the kid one last time before giving up and shifting out from park. "Who was that, anyway?" He nods once in the direction of the boy, eyes lingering on Sam's bruise like an afterthought. Sam flinches under the gaze, same way he did the other night.

Maybe there's something to it, something buried deep in Sam's id, dug out of the dirt and gravel of endless summers, like in those Tom Sawyer novels he used to be so obsessed with. Maybe it's some idyllic boy thing, like painting fences or whatever; maybe they share bruises with a solidarity that's a fucked up answer to friendship necklaces. Sam could probably skew it like that, if he wanted. Someday when this kid, this town, are just the dimmest of memories, maybe he'll pull it out and paint it as something with purpose and meaning, more than the stark reality of the assholes that beat them up for being whatever words it is they use to name an other, an unwanted diversion from the quiet status quo of their constant, quiet lives.

"Just a friend, Dean," Sam says.

"Okay." Dean lifts a palm up in defense or defeat, isn't sure which. "Kay," he repeats, 'cause it kind of doesn't even matter if Sam is telling the truth or not; it isn't going to alleviate that high, stretched feeling wrapping its way tight across Dean's chest.

The high school falls away from them, caught in the rearview mirror for a second, superimposed across the front with a glare of sunlight that cuts into Dean's eyes. It momentarily blinds him, leaving behind neon-bright green and purple stains over his vision.

They could be back -- five years or ten, maybe twenty -- to salt and burn the bones of Sam's just-a-friend. It doesn't take much for Dean to spot a target, and if Dean can see it, then so can all the bullies, from here to the state's edge. Bullies who'll do more than leave your face black and blue, give them enough time, enough boredom, enough unbridled and uncontained hate. Sam was probably good for the kid, a boost to his self-confidence at best, a temporary shield from the worst brunt of their fists, at worst. Dean wants to say something, something a little crass and uncalled for, about teaching a man to fish and feeding him for a lifetime, but with one glance at Sam in the red-tinted shadow of the fading afternoon light, he knows it won't be worth anything. They've got enough riding on their shoulders, enough lives to save day in and day out, not even to mention their own. Sam's done what he can, Dean has no doubt about that. That's all they ever do.

Sometimes there's just no point.

They head north, like Dad had said, first through Kentucky, then into Ohio. They end up tucked back in the far northeastern corner, along the edge of Lake Erie where there's the snow and water and power outages and more excuses than necessary for Sam to end up in Dean's bed.

They've been circling something for awhile, the way grimy water spirals around an old rusted drain. It started in the hot breaths Sam huffs out in his sleep, followed lazily by his mouth, lips chapped and teeth scraping against the rough skin at Dean's neck. Or maybe it started long before that, with Dean's hands tracing the outlines of Sam's collarbones in the dark, listening to the harsh intake of his breath, turning them into something irreparably fucked.

Sam doesn't seem too concerned either way, straddling Dean's hips and rubbing the clothed outlines of their erections together. The mattress squeaks like a death sentence under the strain, and Sam's equally as loud until Dean gets two hands on him; one shoving his hips down, angling them so he's hard and thrusting right up against Dean, the other shoved up in his hair. That's the one he uses to pull their faces close, mumbles something about not waking up Dad before crushing their mouths together.

He's swallowing half Sam's tongue down, then, on top of the little desperate noises Sam makes right on the edge of losing it. The kiss is a mess, though not for lack of enthusiasm, and it continues long after Sam goes still and pliant on top of him.

In the head-splitting dark that follows, still except for the steady rise and fall of Sam's chest as he sleeps, Dean fights down a wave of unasked-for panic.

If Sam shares any of the sentiment, he never shows it in the mornings. Just eats his bowl of cereal and complains loudly about how messy Dean is, shoveling through piles of Dean-isn't-even-sure- _what_ that have ended up on the counters, looking for his school books.

"Little bitch, never appreciate the shit I do for you." Dean moves to swipe at his ear, and Sam dodges it with an ease that comes from years of practice, of seamless habit.

Sam eyes him, warily, pulling on the hand-me-down jacket that used to belong to Dean and is now too small for Sam, tugging in the shoulders, pulled up short above the skin at his wrists. "Oh yeah, you're the martyr here," he says over an eye roll.

And just like that, Dean thinks, that's it. They're fine. They're going to be fine. Maybe not long-term, but Dean's always known his soul was tarnished. That if there's only two directions on one single path, he's headed down the one that ends in hellfire. Been doing so since the first time his blood really boiled with the hunt, since the first time it spilled and sang and he cared just for the rush, for the thrum of it raised up from beneath his skin, throbbing through the calluses in his palms and pounding like drums in his ears. There's only ever going to be the things you do, and at the end of the day the things Dean has done wrong will always outweigh the ones he's done right.

But short-term, maybe, it's fine. Sam doesn't look at him any different -- not in the daylight, anyway -- still rolls his eyes and laughs and bitches and does all the same Sam things. Except now there are other Sam things to add to the list, like the way his mouth tastes (a lot like his mint toothpaste, usually), or the way he has that fixation with Dean's neck, leaving bruises down along it and dragging teeth a fraction too hard at Dean's collarbone.

They're better bruises than the ones Sam wore in Tennessee. They leave Dean a little sick to his stomach, sometimes, in the harsh fluorescent burn of the bathroom light. His face is washed out, yellowed-white like a ghost that's died of jaundice, purpled circles ringing beneath his eyes with pupils narrowed down to pin-pricks in the harsh glare. Tracing a hand across the skin on his neck, where it's broken, blooming out in darkish splotches, Dean hopes it's somewhat a trick of the light. Dad never comments if he sees, though the fractured-glass possibilities of reasons behind his silence that web out in Dean's mind's eye are nowhere near comforting.

Anyway, it doesn't matter -- Dean'd gladly wear them, for Sam or in his place or something like it, though he'd never say it out loud, never give acquiescence to Sam's accusations of martyrdom, no small part because he knows it'd just end up pissing Sam off all the more.

In the silence and the lakeside snow of a quiet Christmas Eve, Sam seems happy. It's infectious; or maybe that's just the eggnog. At sixteen and nearing six feet, Sam's no less a light-weight than he was the first time Dean let him have a beer. Dad's hunting a Chenoo somewhere up around Maine, and if Dean's pride is slightly wounded at being left behind to play babysitter same as when he was eleven, there's at least three other deadly sins more than willing to take its place.

Or then again, maybe that's still just the eggnog.

The alcohol making its way through his veins is the result of gluttony, at least. And that leads to the slow blood-crawl of sloth, which starts innocently enough, thrumming languidly through Dean's limbs, but ends with Sam spread out along the couch, face pressed into the side of Dean's thigh. His hands play with his near-empty mug, almost spilling it at least three times before Dean takes it away, smirking down at the slow-motion tipsy mess of a little brother halfway pulled into his lap.

And Sam's mouth, sloppy and wet and drunk, sucking at the denim stretched across where Dean is already half-hard makes three. Lust is, of course, Dean's favorite of the group, and really there's not much else like the full force of it slamming into him with a sight like that. Sam's hair falls into his eyes, blocking out his face from Dean's view. He makes this sound -- a small, surprised noise that goes straight to Dean's dick, when Dean brushes the overly long bangs back from his forehead.

"Sammy," Dean says, caught around a groan of his own. Sam moves as if to open the zip on Dean's pants, but his fingers stumble, drunk out of his fucking mind.

There's this line that cuts Dean's life down the middle, between the right things for the wrong reasons and the wrong things for the right ones. Sometimes he has to wonder how much of it is wishful thinking, is shutting out the things you don't want to see or hear, how much is just plain wrong for wrong.

Sam is staring up at him and it takes Dean lost, dizzy seconds to figure out why. Then he realizes he's got a fistful of Sam's hair in one hand, fingers locked around Sam's wrist -- the one that had been fumbling at his zipper -- in the other. Holding him back, but also still.

"Dean, come on." Sam swallows harshly. His voice is taut, a couple notes away from a whine, and his eyes are locked on Dean's face.

It shouldn't be that different from when Dean's done it for Sam, but fair or not, Dean knows it is. Which doesn't mean he doesn't want it, but even Dean isn't jaded enough to think that _wanting_ and _right_ are necessarily the same. Dean's dick, however, is not really interested in this moment of moral dilemma, straining as it is against the rough confine of his jeans. The look on Sam's face isn't helping any, drunk but wanting -- needing, maybe, even. Dean's halfway between a massive headache and trying to figure out if giving Sam what he wants is wrong for the right reasons or just plain wrong when Sam makes this noise in his throat that's a choke half-caught around _please_. And honestly, no matter what way you spin it, Dean never really stood a chance.

The noise Sam makes when Dean releases him is lost a moment later in another, longer groan around Dean's cock.

Sam has barely gotten to second base with the handful of girls he's hooked up with, as far as Dean knows, much less done anything like this. But there's an air of drunken determination about him that far makes up for any lack of experience, that same familiar stubbornness Sam has for everything he's set his mind to. It really almost doesn't matter -- the sight alone makes the breath hitch in Dean's throat, suddenly sandpaper dry, when Sam pulls back after taking in too much, leaving behind a glistening trail of where his mouth has been.

He breathes, deep and heavy, and leans into the press of Dean's hand against the side of his face. Dean's murmuring things barely intelligible even to himself, and Sam latches onto that, maybe. He leans forward and runs a swipe of his tongue slowly, almost teasingly, just along the slit like Dean's done for him, maybe imitating the only real source of knowledge he has outside of porn.

Dean lets out a noise, low and lost in the back of his throat, at the thought of Sam sucking him off the way he thinks Dean'd like it, based on the things Dean's done for him. He's taking him as far in his mouth as he can manage, slower this time, the run of his tongue a focused but not-enough pressure.

Dean jerks forward, sudden and on accident. But instead of choking on it, Sam lets out this moan, a throaty hum that reverberates all around Dean, and wraps his fingers tight around the base of his dick. Dean feels the groan that rips from him, more than hears it, has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from inadvertently thrusting further into Sam's mouth.

And maybe Dean's a little drunk, too -- or maybe he owes Sam even more credit for his first go at a blowjob than he's giving -- because it's not very long after that when he tightens his grip on Sam's hair, pulling him off.

"Fuck," Sam says, a thick trail of spit and a little of something else left behind on his chin, making him look as wrecked as Dean feels. He scrambles to wrench free of Dean's hold. For a second, something dark passes over his face, as if he's confused, almost frightened that Dean is making him stop altogether. But then Dean lets out a strained _Sammy_ and he gets it. He swats Dean's hands away, frown small and furious and determined. "Fuck, Dean, let me --"

He's barely got his mouth slammed back on Dean's cock, tongue insistent and fingers digging bruisingly against his hips, before Dean's coming. The force of it rocks through his body, seems to last for way too long, but Sam holds on throughout.

Sam finally breaks away, leaning back but still taking more than enough of his allotted share of the couch. He wipes his mouth as he stares at Dean, and Dean is distracted again by that. His lips form a parted chapped circle, overly red and breathing heavily and slowly in the short space between them.

Dean closes that space, leaning in for a kiss that's slow and wet. Sam's lips are heavy and swollen on his, the remaining taste of Dean's come still lingering in his mouth. No matter what they do, Dean isn't sure he'll ever get used to just this, to kissing Sam. It doesn't make much sense -- and Dean'd probably only admit it out loud under severe threat of torture -- but there's something about kissing Sam that leaves his stomach doing more flip-flops and his head more light and woozy than almost anything else in the world. He figures all it might take to get him hard again could be this, just pulling Sam into his lap and following the soft, familiar movement of Sam's lips, the wet slick of Sam's tongue when it darts in against his. Like they've been kissing for ten years instead of the confused, fractured half of one.

Sam's still making the same small grunts he made around Dean's cock, now into the side of Dean's mouth, lips pressed lazily there when they break for air. Dean doesn't have to reach very far to get a palm pressed flat against the strain of Sam's erection. Sam's hips jerk into the touch, and Dean follows the movement of his eyelids, same flutter-soft pattern as the scrape of one of his nails, dull across a vein that runs at Dean's wrist.

Sam leans back, wiping his palms down the side of his jeans, eyes on Dean's and smile a skip away from a smirk. "You wanna?" he asks or maybe offers, and no matter who he's learned all his tricks from, it comes out miles on the side of earnest over smug.

Dean runs a trace of his fingertips over the fabric at Sam's crotch before answering. The smile falters on Sam's face, replaced by a look that's even better, parted mouth and half-closed eyes, hips rocking into the too-gentle tease of Dean's fingers. Dean makes sure Sam's eyes are open, before sliding off the couch and to his knees, gaze locked firmly on Sam's in silent reply. Sam lets out another groan, sharp and short into the air, spreading his legs as Dean settles between them.

Someday they'll probably have to talk about it. But today, Dean figures, there are just so many things better than words.

Later, they fall asleep wrapped together on a bed that's too small for them both. Maybe, Dean thinks, a little extra-cuddly for the remaining alcohol in their bloodstreams, though that's an excuse that's running thinner day by day. There's going to be hell to pay, tomorrow, when Dean's head is trying to split down the middle and Sam is vomiting in the toilet. But right now, it's fine. Right now, it's simple and thoughtless, just the way Dean likes. Through the thin walls, he can hear the waves of the lake outside, mimicking the soft ebb and flow of Sam's breath, warm on his skin.

Lake Erie's water is freezing and unsalted, and there's this dream Dean's been having, the past couple of weeks, about walking into the middle of it. The walk is the hardest part, ice water and sky enveloping, numbing up his legs. Shunting dark, deep threads of cold down his chest, locking him there. The horizon is grey, gunmetal and bled without distinction into the body of the water, the taste of it all iron and molten and mixed on his tongue.

But underneath, once he's fully submerged in the folds of it, is different. The pressure is like drowning, a little, but the light and the texture are wrong. Everything is dim-lit golds and filtered-sun blues, like making a tent out of bed sheets in the late afternoon of some long-forgotten childhood June. It swells and sways in rhythms, in that dream-space sense that never tastes just the same on waking.

There's a scent in the air of their bedroom, nothing like the saltless lakes, made crisp for the winter wind coming through the draft in the window. Dean stares into the corners of the ceiling, fingers the length of the scar left behind by the werewolf in Louisiana, collecting its sense memory. There's physical pains and then there's other pains, and then there's the space behind his eyes that he can see when he closes them, something liminal and vertiginous, on the edge of sleep. Some idea of an asphyxiation that's comforting, like rewinding the pieces of a life in slow motion and folding back up into a warm womblike place that's at its beginning, or its end.

Sam shivers in his sleep, under the idle touch of Dean's hands. Everything is fine, Dean reminds himself, a stray strand of Sam's hair tickling against the side of his face. Dad's fine, Sammy's fine. And if that's the case, then he's fine, too. 'Cause whatever the world doesn't believe in doesn't make it not true, and after all, they've always been in the business of the unseen truths in the dark. Everything's fine. And someday he'll repeat it enough that maybe it'll be true.  



End file.
